Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17), parent form
Screen psychosocial functioning and identify concerns for further child-focused clinical assessment
Reference information · Questionnaire
- Last content update
- 2026-10-26
- Clinical review
- Not independently reviewed
- Source jurisdiction
- See individual sources
- Coverage
- Questionnaire
| Field | Instrument context |
|---|---|
| Version | English parent PSC-17, MGH grouped order: internalizing1–5, attention6–10, externalizing11–17; unscored help question retained |
| Population | Children; primary national validation sample ages4–15 years. Interpret other ages using applicable local validation. |
| Respondent | Parent or guardian describing the child |
| Recall period | No fixed recall interval specified in this selected form |
| Purpose | Screen psychosocial functioning and identify concerns for further child-focused clinical assessment |
Please mark under the heading that best describes your child. Select Never, Sometimes or Often for each of the17 statements. The final question asks whether your child needs help and contributes no score. This is the parent version; do not substitute youth self-report norms. All17 symptom ratings are required for this website report.
PSC developed by M.S. Jellinek and J.M. Murphy, Massachusetts General Hospital. PSC-17: Gardner and colleagues(1999); Murphy and colleagues(2016). Exact selected MGH parent-form wording and developer attribution retained.
Responses stay in this page’s memory. Reset or leave the page to clear them. No patient identifiers are collected.
Interpretation & limitations
- Sum the17 ratings0–2 for a total0–34. In this grouped source, items1–5 sum internalizing0–10;6–10 attention0–10;11–17 externalizing0–14. Other PSC17 forms use a different question order: do not transfer their item-number keys.
- The primary validation uses total15 or more, internalizing5 or more, attention7 or more and externalizing7 or more as screening guides for further evaluation. These do not diagnose depression, anxiety, ADHD or a conduct disorder.
- All17 symptom responses are required before showing a total or dimensions. The final help-needed response is optional and unscored; an expressed request is retained even when symptom responses are incomplete.
- Interpret parent perceptions, developmental level, language, family and school context. The validation study cautions against deriving diagnosis or treatment from these scores without additional assessment.
- This free clinical questionnaire is not an automatically validated youth, translated or preschool-specific substitute.
- No automatic diagnosis, medication change or declaration of safety.
References · 3
- MGH exact grouped English parent PSC-17, all17 items and help question
- Co-developer Michael S. Jellinek: availability, clinical purpose, PSC17 and electronic use · Co-developer Michael S. Jellinek states that the PSC is freely available without charges for the tool, use or scoring, discusses the shortened PSC17 and electronic clinical administration. This implementation is the existing free clinical questionnaire route; no charge is made for this instrument. Source attribution and exact parent-form wording are retained.
- Murphy, Bergmann, Chiang et al2016 primary national validation: scoring and screening guides